A Woman's Journey With Rare Disease

Connecting Non-Connected Health Devices

As I was preparing for Sickadilly Chat #4, Let’s talk about Tech, Baby! I came across an interesting company. I reached out to them for a bit more information & then set up a call to discuss. It didn’t make it of course in time for the Blab but I still thought it was worthy of a post & share.

So many people have devices & may be on a limited income. They have a reliable blood glucose monitor or blood pressure machine they are hesitant to give up or switch out for a connected device. I get this. It’s an added expense & then also time to invest in learning a new device.

Even those of us with connected devices may not have an easy or secure way to share our information with our doctors if need be.

Enter Validic’s VitalSnap. The way VitalSnap works is a code that is inserted into some type of patient portal or electronic health record through a healthcare professional. Using a smartphone camera, I could take a picture of a reading through a non-connected device, say a blood pressure monitor, open the VitalSnap app (that my doctor directs me to download) & then upload that reading through the app.

I could through my understanding with speaking to the company also upload or export data from Apple HealthKit from my connected devices or even a Fitbit as well.

As a result, my doctors & I could have an easier & secure way to trade information from my phone (whether my devices are connected or not).

Validic has other products besides VitalSnap that endeavor to leverage all the health data our devices collect in order to find a reasonable & easy way to export that data & share it with our healthcare team through cloud-based technologies.

For the doctors & professionals I know who are interested in services like this I’ve posted a few white papers & items below that were sent to me from the company that I’ve been given permission to share.

In closing, I think this is definitely worth asking the doctor’s office about if they are willing to look into it. It’s basically a line of code added into an existing system then the app is developed around it.

(DISCLAIMER: I was not paid by this company. I found them on my own doing an internet search on digital health. I thought doing a profile of this company might be a useful way to share information with others to take back to their doctors to see if their non-connected devices data could somehow still be transmitted to their doctor in some way while also protecting their privacy. This analysis in no way constitutes medical advice or product endorsement. This company does not market directly to healthcare consumers, but works through doctors & professional offices but it might be a good way to start a conversation with one’s care team about getting data off the phone in an easy & secure way. )

2 thoughts on “Connecting Non-Connected Health Devices”

I am a data guy. I’ve kept a spread sheet of my own data for 3,207 days. Which was the day I returned home post transplant. I have used Fitbits, for steps, sleep and exercise. I have used a variety of Apps and Online sites to track my nutritional data. Plus I do a daily weigh-in and a twice daily BP & heart rate. (both device only, not connected devices) And from time to time I have tracked fluid intake/output.

It has been my dream to be able to feed all data to one spot and arrange it for my own use.

I had communicated with some developers, but the bottomline was that there were not enough of “us” folks wanting to track everything healthy.

what I liked about this company was that they seemed to be able to work with existing technology & portals. Then doctor’s offices could just add that code in to those existing tools & pass along the company app. Then it’s matter of that point, shoot & upload. I am hoping that many offices will at least look into this. I don’t have pricing info on it, but hope it’s reasonable. We put so much into the phones & clouds these days, there has to be some kind of way to securely transmit it where we need to go. I would like to see something on our end go this way & maybe there is, I just haven’t found it quite yet….But I’ll write it up when I do 🙂 Because I know it’s not just you & me that have interest. Others are starting 🙂 But this was great for you to respond, because sometimes when I do these posts, I’m not sure if out there in Networld anyone is picking up on what I’m trying to convey 🙂 I really appreciate the input!